If you wanted to gauge how glaring the difference between US and UK rock sensibilities had become in 1993, all you had to do was check out two hyped new bands. One was Suede, the London press darlings whose dramatically attired, dramatically intoning, dramatically quotable lead singer, Brett Anderson, flaunted his not-really-bisexuality in interview and song alike. Suede's self-titled debut conquered England but fizzled in the US with everyone but the most ardent students of glam.

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Archers of Loaf, from the North Carolina college town Chapel Hill, held the reverse position in pretty much every way. They were American collegiate, and they emerged at a time when that sensibility, thanks to the alternative rock bubble, suddenly had serious cultural import for the first time ever. Led by basketball-tall, already-balding Eric Bachmann, with his sweet but homely croak, the Archers dressed as if they had just got out of bed, subscribing to the our-band-could-be-your-life ethos of living on tour: during the band's mid-90s ascent through the US indie circuit, their bass player, Matt Gentling, stayed on a friend's porch when not on the road. The same year Brett Anderson appeared on the cover of Select magazine, looming over the words "Yanks Go Home", Archers of Loaf's debut, Icky Mettle – shaggy, unadorned, take-it-or-leave-it – left almost no trace in the UK, where a lot of people are still confused about what, exactly, people ever liked about this band.

The answer is simple: the guitars. Bachmann and Eric Johnson were given to making a lot of noise together. On Icky Mettle, which is to be reissued in a deluxe edition, you can hear that most obviously on Might, where Bachmann's simple note-picking is soon joined by Johnson's ruder, sharper variant during the first chorus. As soon as Bachmann is has finished singing, Johnson hits the riff, a dive-bombing thing that climaxes with two high notes that are also useful as launching pads to go a little nuts – which, on each successive guitar break, is what the two of them go ahead and do. Might is just over two minutes long, and no break overstays its boundary. But even considering the restraints of the format, they cut loose.

This is not to imply that the Archers were noise warriors in particular, just that they came along at a time when rock bands were expected to be gritty and unkempt – in the US, at least – and they made the most of it. That was the very thing that Select was railing against, though, and it probably didn't help the Archers' cause that the lyrics on Icky Mettle are pretty whiny. The band knew it, too. Part of the charm was that they were droll about it, albeit in an aw-shucks way that might not have travelled well. The chorus of the opening song, Web in Front, rubs: "All I ever wanted was to be your spine"; a dirge titled Toast ends with Bachmann wailing: "There's something wrong with my toast!" The latter is a knowing jab at indie self-involvement, but only if you know it's a jab. Bachmann's sardonic, but his band is in-the-moment loose.

Bachmann has grown neater as a musician – his Americana-leaning outlet Crooked Fingers is, for many a non-Archers fan, a more apt setting for his croak. But even there, he still prizes a certain ragged quality.

What surprised me, when I caught the reformed Archers playing in New York, is that so many people were yelling every lyric. You get the sense that because the Archers don't have the legacy of Pavement (the Archers only made their live-TV debut last month, on Jimmy Fallon's show), there's less pressure. They don't have to represent anything, even though they obviously and clearly do for many people. They just have to play their songs – and remind us how many of them stick once you get past the noise. And in many cases, because of it.

• The remastered Icky Mettle is released on Merge on 2 August in the US, and on Fire Records on 26 September in the UK. Archers of Loaf play the All Tomorrow's Parties festival at Butlin's in Minehead on 9 December.